


Midnight Rider

by nwspaprtaxis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Episodes, Community: spn_summergen, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear, Fear of Death, Gen, Going to Hell, Hellhounds, Horror, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Child Abuse, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Touching, Panic, Post-Episode: s03e15 Time Is On My Side, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – PTSD, Pre-Episode: s03e16 No Rest For The Wicked, Protective Sam Winchester, Protectiveness, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-09-07 04:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20303104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwspaprtaxis/pseuds/nwspaprtaxis
Summary: The countdown alone is bad enough — Dean’s got thirteen days and change left — but throw in the fact that he’s hearing Hellhounds baying as it gets dark, can feel them bearing down on him and smell their rancid breath behind him…. Desperate for distraction and craving avoidance, he and Sam pursue leads in the hopes of a case, but Dean’s terror and dread attracts the stuff of lore and dreams become real.





	Midnight Rider

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/gifts).

> **Author Note:** This is probably going to be a dead giveaway for who I am, but I’m going to go full speed ahead while the music swells like the Academy Awards. First, this fic took an entire village to write as I haven’t written anything _SUPERNATURAL_-related nor seen an episode of the show in five years before attempting the undertaking that is Summergen. First, infinite gratitude is offered to my betas [Tolakasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa), [BlindSwandive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive), and [Monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe), who not only caught SPAG errors and brainstormed suggestions and offered insight over the course of countless drafts, but also cheered and encouraged me to completion when I didn’t think I was going to ever finish this beast, let alone make my deadlines.
> 
> Thank you, also, to the rest of the _1st Draft Saloon_ Discord gang for writing sprints and offering expert details whenever I needed. Additional acknowledgements is also needed here: [Quickreaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver) for the location, [wings_of_crows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wings_of_crows) for a massive plot breakthrough, and [Alyndra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra) for an emergency last-minute beta and the title.
> 
> I’d like to offer an Edible Arrangement bouquet to [Quickreaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver), [Kalliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel), and [Dugindeep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotsauce) for being spectacular mods in organizing and running this massive event and their time in posting daily fic or art for a couple of months while fielding emails (numerous of which came from yours truly) and all the challenges that must come with such a large group of participants while also managing Real Life (TM). They also have my gratitude for generously giving me not one, but _two_ extensions and forgiving me when I was still late. 
> 
> Finally, bonus smishes to [Kalliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel) for such fabulous prompts…. I really hope this hits your high notes and pushes all the buttons even though this fic is probably not what you were expecting at all. It was an utter joy to write this for you. I ended up taking fragments of several prompts and tried to incorporate as many of them as I could. I definitely took your encouragement to play as loose with the prompts with reckless abandon. See the Author Note at the end of the fic for the full list of prompts to hunt down all the Easter Eggs within the fic.

“It’s important to remember your nightmares. You’re going to need them,” the Mare whispers as she straddles his shins through the coverlet. The twenty-something lying supine beneath her gasps, his breath gurgles in his throat. It’s a sound dangerously close to a death rattle and she smiles. He doesn’t move — he _can’t_, not with her grip on his mind as well as his shirt — as she moves further up the length of his body, pressing her weight onto his knees and thighs. She breathes in the stink of fear and dread that emanates from him. The seconds stretch longer into minutes as she bends forward, pushing her hands against his chest for balance. His arms and legs are pinioned along his sides, pressed hard against the mattress. 

His brow furrows and he makes a soft sound of protest. Or maybe it’s distress — it’s hard to distinguish between the two sometimes.

She grunts in frustration. 

He’s dreaming about the fucking funeral again. Funerals are _tame_; toothless, emasculated, compared to whatever came before or will follow them. She’s also already mined this one for everything it has, wrung it out dry — it’s not the first time he’d dreamt this. And the fact that he’s back to dreaming about the funeral means that all that’s left of him is the dregs.

She slides sideways into his dream, wrapping herself in black and taking on the semblance of a bereaved widow. She digs her fingers deeper into his subconscious, squeezes it like wet clay — _He shouldn’t have died. It should’ve been you_. She clutches a folded flag — a triangle of white stars on a blue field — tight to her chest and screams at his dream-self, “This is your fault!”

It’s the tripwire to the bomb in his head.

_Ringing in his ears. Grit in his teeth. Sand and blood. Firefights and IEDs and twisted metal. Children in pieces. The guy in front of him sheared in half…._

She opens her mouth over his and inhales. He chokes, air rattling as it catches. She inhales and inhales, sucking as though drawing up sludgy water through a too-small straw. Then there’s a release and he goes slack, head tilted back, glazed and unseeing eyes fixed at the ceiling behind her head, mouth wide open in a rictus of a scream.

The Mare sits back with a sharp huff, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth, sated. She looks down at the dead veteran under her. _Shame_, she thinks. It had been good while he’d lasted — Fallujah is a perennial favorite of hers and his underlying panic of _having to go back_ had made it all the sweeter — but it was a shame it hadn’t lasted longer. People are fucking weak these days — a year or two of nightmares and they give up the ghost. Not like generations before, when it would take her decades to drain a person of their essence. Now there are medications that dull her senses and reflexes and leave her mouth tasting of aluminum for hours or even days afterwards, psychologists and support groups to process trauma and fear and dread into impotent facsimiles of their former potential. 

Of course, there’s also the fact her metabolism increases as she gets older and stronger and becomes the stuff of ancient lore. These days, it takes more and more for her to stay rooted in the corporeal world. But people still dream, and as long as they have nightmares, she can _feed_.

And as long as she can feed, the world will never be rid of her.

The Mare slips off the bed and pads into the bathroom, where she twists the dial of the shower counterclockwise as far as it will go, making the water as hot as the tank allows, and steps into the spray. She rubs a green-tinted bar of Irish Spring soap over her breasts, belly, and a quick dip into her crotch before sliding down her legs. She washes the soles of her feet. When she’s clean, she steps out, not bothering to shut off the water, and dries herself with a scratchy, once-white towel. 

Dropping the towel on the floor, she steps out of the bathroom. She picks up a gauzy, floral-print sundress from the stairs where she’d allowed it to fall when he’d pawed at her so desperately, and redresses while she walks through the house. She can still hear the water rushing through the pipes and pouring from the shower. By the door, she squeezes her feet into half-size-too-small Ugg boots, hopping on one foot and then the other as she wedges them over her insteps, and takes the camouflage Army jacket from the back of the solitary kitchen chair. It is too big on her, the name across the left breast isn’t hers, but she doesn’t care as she steps out into the early-spring night. She buries her hands in the deep pockets at her thighs as fat flakes drift from the sky to the concrete. They don’t stick.

* * *

A gas station receipt flutters into the footwell as Sam opens their father’s old journal. He reaches down, fishes it up from the floor. On one side there’s a barely-legible $66.60 itemizing a full tank worth of premium-grade gasoline, a giant bag of beef jerky, and an extra-large cup of coffee. On the other….

“They’re coordinates again, aren’t they?” Dean says with a quick glance at the paper. He turns his gaze back to the road with a scoff. “Sonuvabitch.” He smacks a palm against the edge of the steering wheel. “Fuck. Even dead, Dad still….”

“Yeah. Looks like it.” Sam places the scrap with their father’s handwriting back into the journal. It faces a page with the word _NIGHTMARES_ scrawled along the top, taking up the width of the page. The _MARE_ portion of the word is boxed off, underlined with several hard strokes. Beneath, there is a quick, spare drawing of a faceless figure with messy, dark hair in bold, angry presses of a black pen taking up much of the page. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d have thought it was a Stephen Gammell sketch from that traumatizing kid’s book Dean had stolen from a church yard sale for his seventh birthday.

“Where to?”

Sam shrugs.

“Unsolved case?”

“Maybe.” Sam closes the small binder, palm against the buttery leather, and returns it to its place in the glove compartment. “Could be nothing, though.”

Dean blows out a frustrated exhale. “C’mon, man. Are you going to be like this all fucking month?”

“No.” Sam’s voice is harsh and petulant.

Dean glowers. The car hits the edge of a pothole and there’s the quick jerk of a wheel to correct their course and the sound of skittering gravel. Dean curses.

“No,” Sam repeats, this time quieter. “It’s just that I don’t think we should be looking for cases when….”

_When you’ve got that damn deal hanging over your head. When you only got three hundred and sixty five days instead of a decade for your soul. When you’re down to fifteen of those left. When we should be focusing on ways to break your deal so you get to see summer like everyone else._

“When _what_, Sam?” Dean’s voice is sharp, tight. “C’mon, man, this is what we _do_.” A beat. “Please?” The word is a whisper, spoken too high.

Sam exhales, thumps his head against the back of the seat. He stares at the fabric covering the ceiling for a long moment. He straightens, stretching out his shoulders and back as he sits up again. “All right. Lemme figure it out.” He opens the glove compartment, takes out the map, the journal, and a ruler.

* * *

“There are worse things here than ghosts,” the Mare whispers, tucking the worn, stale-smelling quilt more securely around the girl — she’s barely twelve, but is definitely no longer a child, no matter her size or calendar age — shivering on her lap. “But I can protect you from him.” She begins humming tunelessly, keeping her arms wrapped around the small body. Inside the girl’s mind, she is the monster that passes for her father, looming over-large and emanating sickness. 

As much as the man evokes delicious fear, the girl’s dreams are limiting and constrained — the Mare can only work with memory and the concrete; she cannot pull from the imagination or the fantastical or what has not yet come to pass. 

She twists the dream on itself, becomes the barrier between the child and danger — the girl’s fear is so potent, she doesn’t even have to stir a nightmare.

The girl leans into her shoulder, her head growing heavy. The attic crawlspace is hot and stifling, rank with the stench of the girl’s terror. The Mare licks her lips. Her feet sweat in her sheepskin-lined boots. She can feel herself becoming more solid and real — dread does that to her. The girl’s breathing grows slow and deep. Her face furrows and she twitches in her sleep, curling in rigidly and protectively on herself; on guard even in sleep. 

The Mare keeps humming, stroking her fingers up-and-down along a blanket-covered arm. The girl’s fear is suffocating, constant, and the Mare lowers her lips to the girl’s forehead, a butterfly-light touch she clearly doesn’t feel, and inhales. She feels alive. She presses her fingers to the girl’s jaw, tilts it up, and bends her face closer, her hair swinging forward. It’s a dull brown now, bleeding darker from roots to ends with every breath she takes. “I can take you someplace far away where he’ll never hurt you again.” The girl sighs but doesn’t relax, her body still tense. The Mare brings her mouth to the girl’s parted lips and inhales. Unlike the war vet in Rochester last month, it’s too easy. It takes hardly any effort at all. The girl’s life slips silently and effortlessly, _willingly_, into her mouth and she swallows it down. 

It is weak and feeble, barely a mouthful; but the fear is sharp and pungent and she feels herself take up space again. 

She sets the girl, gray and still, down on the bare plywood floor. Her body will be discovered in less than a couple of hours; he knows where she hides. But he won’t ever be able to touch her again. 

She crawls out and stands in the girl’s room. It’s young, at odds with the girl she’s gotten to know these past couple of weeks; dainty and pink like the inside of a seashell. She goes to the mirrored bureau, picks up a silver necklace from the open jewelry box with its perpetually slow-turning ballerina. The crucifix that dangles from it is small and delicate. The chain is too small to fit around her throat so, instead, she loops it twice around her wrist as a bracelet, and climbs out the window.

* * *

“Nothing?” Sam shuts off the meter in his hand and goes to Dean’s side, by the large bay window edged with frothy pink polka-dotted fabric. The bedroom is frilly, girlish. The walls are the pale color of pink cotton candy, while the simple, straight lines of the white-painted IKEA wooden furniture scream chaste innocence. She’d been a kid; would’ve been twelve in less than a week, found blue and dead in the attic crawlspace behind the closet. The coroner had ruled it asphyxiation.

“Zilch.” Dean purses his lips. He clearly doesn’t like this. “Not even a blip. No EMF. No cold spots. No nothing.”

“Me neither. Maybe we read it wrong and it’s not a case?” Sam keeps his voice quiet. The coordinates he’d found in the car had been a bust — best Sam can figure, it’d been a Black Dog and Dad must’ve taken care of it because there’d been nothing out of the ordinary beyond that rash of decapitated sheep five years ago, so they’d moved on to the next nearest thing they could find to a case. Making matters worse, this was the second suspicious death in a row they’d found that had gone cold. The first had been outside of Rochester — a guy between them in age who’d served a tour in Afghanistan and was due to be deployed to Iraq within the month. He’d died in his sleep right around the same time they’d hunted that Crocotta. Aneurysm.

“_Again_?” Dean is incredulous. “C’mon, Sam. Really?”

“It’s possible. I mean….” He sighs. “Look, we’re grasping at straws here. This is the second time we’ve wound up in Erie this month. Maybe we’re looking for things that just aren’t there.”

“Maybe.” Dean doesn’t sound convinced. “There’s a dead body, but no ghost.”

“Not everybody becomes a spirit,” Sam says. Instantaneously, he regrets it.

Dean sighs, stares a hole through the floor. “Yeah. Well.” A pause. “We got anything else?”

Sam presses his lips together. He doesn’t like this. Dean’s not even trying anymore. He wishes he could convince his brother to just go to Bobby’s to turtle up until his deal comes due in a little over two weeks. Sam’s itching to get his hands on some of Bobby’s tomes; there might be something in one of the books, and he knows that Dean would appreciate the safety and security and sense of _home_ of Bobby’s property. Maybe his brother would even be able to take out some of his pent-up terror and anger on a hollowed-out Thunderbird. 

_Even odds whether that’d be repair or demolition_, Sam thinks. He looks up, sees his brother’s gone back to the opening cut into the false plywood of the closet back wall. “C’mon, Dean. Let’s get the hell out of here and see if we can find something else. Maybe another death.” Sam waits for a comeback: _A _death_? That’s weak, Sam. People die every day. This is the second one you’ve found in a week and so far they’ve all been dry — no cold spots, no EMF, nothing weird or out of the ordinary. Give me something a bit more substantial to chew on here, decapitated cows, goats drained of all their blood. _Something_, man_.

Instead, Dean jerks his chin toward Sam. “Yeah, okay. We can be past Cincinnati before it gets dark.” A pause. “Let’s go.” He claps Sam on the back. “Daylight’s wasting.”

Sam doesn’t correct him, even though it’s barely one in the afternoon and, this time of the year, the sun doesn’t set until nearly eight.

* * *

The Mare lets the woman drop to the pavement behind the dumpster and sighs. She’s burning through them too quickly these days and she’s still so, so _hungry_.

She tucks her hair behind her ear, glancing at the ends. Still white. _Fuck_. None of her marks are satiating her as they should. She needs existential dread, the kind of fear that comes from staring Death in the face. A true fight-flight-freeze paralyzing kind of terror that brings sweat-cold damp sheets and nerves strung out on too much coffee. 

The closest she’d come was the vet in March. 

The preacher’s daughter in Erie last week had been promising, but didn’t live up to her potential. 

But now, this drug-addict in Monroe is already wearing off. Her fear of meeting her assailant in court next week isn’t enough sustenance. Once it might’ve tided her over for a few days, or even a week if she was desperate. These days, she’s lucky if it holds her for several hours.

She paws at the woman, comes up with a couple of wrinkled dollar bills, a one-year Narcotics Anonymous sobriety token, and a fingernail’s worth of fentanyl still wrapped in a pinch of tinfoil. She slips the gold-plated medallion into the pocket of her army jacket and leaves the rest where she found them. 

Hands in her pockets, fingers toying with the ridged disk that is not quite a memento, but more than mere trophy, she walks out of the alleyway, turns left on the street and orients herself southwards towards Toledo. She’s got a long walk ahead of her.

* * *

Dean stays on Route 303 and heads west, blazing past Cleveland and trailing northward. Sam doesn’t say anything. It’s not like they have to be anywhere in particular and, besides, the drive seems to calm Dean. He almost smiles and he reaches over to turn up the music. The windows are open and there’s nothing but miles of smooth asphalt and hardly any traffic. 

The breeze is cooler than Sam would like, but warmer than he expects, considering it’s barely mid-April, so he isn’t going to argue over something so banal. _In a month, you won’t have this_, a voice says in the back of his mind.

In Toledo, Dean stops in the parking lot of a motel that’s seen better days. He lets go of the steering wheel and doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, letting them hover, palms up as though in supplication. “I need a break,” he pauses, smears his hand over his mouth, jaw. “Get us a room.” His voice is flat and he doesn’t seem to notice Sam raising a suggestive eyebrow in response. He shuts off the car, rolls up the window so the damp from Maumee Bay doesn’t ruin the upholstery, and gets out. The door thuds behind him with a finality that doesn’t invite discussion.

Sam unfolds himself from the car. He doesn’t comment that they still have several hours of daylight left, or that they didn’t leave Slippery Rock for Erie until after nine that morning, despite turning in early the previous night, too. He opens the door to the backseat, shoulders his duffle and looks up in time to see Dean head toward downtown: the waterfront and the bars. He sighs, turns to their motel-of-the-night, staring up at the sign. _Hi-Line_, the neon tubing says in curvy retro font that was probably chic in its day but now just seems to scream how long this place has been falling apart. There’s a gaping opening where removable letters likely once went — announcing amenities like heated pools and air conditioning or color television and magic fingers beds. The low, white building has seen better days. Beyond it is a church.

He steps into the tiny office, as derelict and garish as he expected it to be, all fake-wood paneling walls and peeling linoleum countertops. The bored-looking teenage girl sitting behind the counter pops her bubble gum loudly and tucks a strand of obviously box-dyed black hair behind an ear that has at least a dozen piercings in a neat line along the curve of her cartilage and down to the lobe. More than one of them looks infected. She looks up from the clipboard where she’s tying together multicolored threads into an intricate pattern and blinks heavy-lidded gray eyes ringed with too much eyeliner at him. She chews her gum, blows another bubble that breaks open over her lips. The dark lipstick doesn’t smudge as she runs her tongue over them, catching all the stringy pink strands. 

“Here for a room?” Her voice is flat, nasal. Sam suspects that her speech impediment is not because of her septum piercing. She turns without waiting for his answer, plucks a form and a key from the wall behind her. “Sign here.”

Sam scrawls an alias and hands over the fraudulent credit card. It must go through because the girl slides the card and a key back to him without making eye contact, engrossed in the macramé in front of her. “Room nine. Go out the door and take a left. It’ll be the building closest to the church, farthest door from the road.” 

Sam finds the room without difficulty — the girl’s directions were straightforward, and there’s a helpful peeling vinyl number nine stuck crookedly to the door beneath the peephole. The key sticks but the handle turns. The room is clean, standard old motel fare— two queen-sized beds, a couple of bedside tables, a TV that looks as old as he is, a couple of low, wide upholstered chairs in an aqua-and-yellow plaid that should’ve gone out with the sixties. There’s a small chrome table under the window with matching chairs. Two walls are a faux-wood paneling veneer while the other two walls are papered in a loud, garish floral of mustard-yellow and mint-green.

_It’s ugly, but not the worst_, Sam thinks, setting down his duffel on the bed farthest from the door.

* * *

In Toledo, the Mare feeds for the second time that day; a museum executive worrying about writing a grant for the next exhibit for the Glass Pavilion. She normally wouldn’t go for something so trivial, so short-term, but she’s desperate.

White-collar fear doesn’t do anything for her hunger and need; she can still feel her own lack of solidity. She feels like vapor, insubstantial and not real. She doesn’t take up space, and when she brings her hand to the doorknob, it passes through the handle. She slides through the closed door, not taking anything of his; he wasn’t worth it.

She turns towards the waterfront and the bars.

A place like this — a decadent place that’s seen better days and is now barely hanging on by its fingernails, a place that made it big in the boom after the last World War and never recovered when the industry left for overseas — breeds desperation. Desperation breeds fear, and fear breeds dread. George Lucas and _Star Wars_ had gotten it pretty damn close to the truth. 

She’s in need of some real dread; not the brief temporary kind that comes from petty avoidance, but the lingering kind that emanates, rank and stinking, from the pores. She knows she could find what she needs if she looked — but she doesn’t have the time to earn trust, not like she had done with the girl in Erie. Bars, though…. Bars are always good; it was in one such dive she’d found the veteran. She slides her tongue over dry, chapped lips in remembrance of how sweet he’d tasted. He’d satisfied her for over a week.

* * *

Dean isn’t sure how long he walks — it’s long enough for the sky to dim into purple dusk. Finally, he stops wandering aimlessly and enters a bar. It’s small, run-down, old beer advertisements faded by the sun and wind tacked to peeling, splintering clapboard. He goes to the long counter, sits on one of the stools, and orders a shot of whiskey, straight. 

It appears in front of him without question and he’s grateful. He reaches out and tosses it back. It hits the back of his mouth, burns down his throat in a scorch he barely feels. He breathes out, slow and trembling, as he sets the glass down on the sticky countertop. He’s grateful Sam didn’t ask questions, hadn’t followed. He doesn’t think he could explain how he’s already hearing the Hellhounds baying as it gets dark, can feel them bearing down on him and smell their rancid breath behind him. Every day, it seems, they get closer. The countdown alone is bad enough — he knows exactly how much time he’s got left; thirteen days and some change in hours — but this…. He shudders, orders another.

This early in the evening, the bar is nearly deserted; there’s the bartender, a couple of overweight guys, and a petite girl about his age leaning by the fire exit, drinking something bright and fruity-looking from a rounded, pear-shaped glass. She’s short, barely five feet tall by his estimate, pale, and dressed in an odd assortment of clothes that only make her look even tinier: a much too-large army jacket with all the patches picked off; a faded, stained summer dress; a pair of those boxy, overpriced, soft-looking boots.

She’s pretty enough — especially with her striking white-blonde, waist-length hair that is shampoo-ad straight, smooth, and sleek. A year ago, he’d might have thought about buying her a drink, strike up a conversation, maybe score a little more. But now the only company he wants is in the glass in his hand.

* * *

The Mare closes her lips around the plastic stirring straw of her daiquiri — cloyingly sweet to most human standards, but for her, sugar syrup has nothing on terror — and slurps the dregs of rum and ice. The straw scrapes against the bottom of her glass. She watches the guy at the end of the bar raise his finger, simultaneously pushing his glass toward the bartender as another shot of whiskey is immediately set before him. It’s his fifth. 

She gets up and makes her way slowly toward him.

He’s handsome — clean-cut and solid with the stoic expression of someone who’s seen battle. _Soldier_, she decides. _Navy SEALs or Special Ops. Maybe even Blackwater_. The way he holds himself screams combat experience or, at the very least, military-grade training. He pounds back his shot, repeats the gesture. A sixth materializes in front of him.

“Why don’t you just order the whole bottle?” she asks, boosting herself onto the stool beside him. She’s pleased when his green eyes — sad, haunted — track up and down her form. “Might as well — it’d probably be cheaper at the rate you’re going, anyway.” She sets a wrinkled twenty on the bar. “It’s on me.” She smiles at him. 

He picks up the shot glass, brings it to his full lips, and tilts his head back in one smooth movement. The amber liquid disappears into his mouth and she sees his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. He sets the empty glass down on the sticky surface and flips it over.

The silence stretches between them. 

He shakes his head as though to dislodge an annoying fly, presses one hand against the side of his temple, the heel of his hand digging into the flesh just above his ear. After a moment, he drops his hand and drags the glass across the countertop, making a five-pointed star with the damp.

She reaches over, draws a circle around his star with her finger. “Protection,” she says. “Smart.” 

He startles, blinks at her in surprise, her comment catching him off-balance.

She gives him a moment. Then: “You got a name?” 

He glances down, clears his throat. “Dean.” His voice is blunt, a deterrent.

She smiles at him even though he’s not looking. “I’m Mara,” she answers, even though she prefers anonymity — no names, no information, nothing that’d tie her to anyone or anything. She hasn’t survived over a century by making friends. But she senses that Dean needs that emotional connection; that beat of trust and acknowledgement between strangers. Mara is a name she’s used before — she has the Old Norse to thank for it — and it’s common enough that without a last name, she’s untraceable. It’s also Hebrew for _bitter_ or _sorrow_, which is fitting considering what she both searches out and leaves in her wake. Besides, the despair is rolling off Dean in waves, suffocating and all consuming, a real piss-his-pants terror she hasn’t smelled in a long time. He’s not going to be around much longer.

She brushes her fingers against his forearm and he flinches. “It’s all right,” she whispers, slurring her words together slightly. “Let me.” She presses closer to his side, strokes his arm again. 

“Don’t.” Dean pushes her back into her seat, firmly but gently rejecting her advances. 

She pouts, pushing out her lower lip. “Don’t you want me?”

“No.” He laughs, but it’s hollow and bitter. It’s not a nice sound. “Sweetheart, it’s you who don’t want me.” He pauses. “See…. I’m dying.”

She pulls back, faking surprise. She’d guessed as much. Death always brings out the best kind of carnal terror, even in those who’ve resigned themselves to their fate. “Is it cancer? Or something like that?” She pitches her voice low, gentle and concerned.

The tenderness works.

“Something like that.” 

She slides off her stool. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get outta here. No sense in wasting what time we’ve got left in here.”

Dean’s brow furrows. “But….” He blows out a hard, frustrated breath. “Look, Mara, you don’t want to get tangled up with me. Fuck. _I_ wish I wasn’t messed up with me.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” she rushes her words together, trying to make him understand. She can’t let him get away, not when he smells so good. Not when she’s already growing stronger just by standing in his personal space — she can see her hands starting to pink and she hopes he’s too wasted to notice her transformation. “I don’t get mixed up in anything I don’t want to get into. Besides, we’ll both be gone tomorrow. I’m just looking for a way to pass a couple of hours.” When he doesn’t answer, she presses on. “Come on. Just come for a walk by the waterfront with me. It’s gorgeous this time of night — it’ll help take your mind off things. Promise.”

* * *

Dean is grateful that Mara doesn’t talk as they walk, letting him swig straight from the pilfered whiskey bottle from time to time. Although he supposes it’s not technically stealing since she’d paid for it. He’s almost falling-over drunk, but he doesn’t care. It’s not quite enough to silence the barking Hellhounds, but more than enough for the sound to blend with the rest of the dull city noise. He flinches and knows she doesn’t miss it when she touches her fingers to his wrist, slides her hand until it’s resting inside his cupped palm. Her hand is cold. He doesn’t let go. It grounds him that tiny bit. She stops, drops the now-empty bottle over the railing into the bay, and turns to face him. 

Her expression is so earnest and nonjudgmental that in spite of the conditioning, and the echo of Dad’s voice that always tells him to keep every secret, he finds himself telling her about his deal, how he’s down to days, and is already hearing Hellhounds. 

She listens until he’s finished, and doesn’t even suggest once that he’s lying or insane, or look at him with wide-eyed scared-bunny horror. Instead of turning tail and running from him, she rises onto her tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth. Dean bends, curling around her to accommodate for their height difference. She reaches up, cups the back of his head, digging her fingers into the short hair there, deepening their kiss. He opens his mouth, lets her entwine her tongue with his. Her mouth tastes of synthetic strawberry syrup and Goldfish crackers. It’s not a turn-off.

She stops, breaks the kiss, but keeps her face tilted up to his. Her hair looks darker in the glow of the streetlight — more blonde than white. She searches his eyes. They are a pale, watery blue, and he wonders if she’s albino. “It’s important to remember your nightmares. You’re going to need them.”

Just like that, what arousal and desire he’d managed to kindle leaves him as effectively as if he’d taken a dive into the bay. He tries for a smirk that he knows doesn’t stick. “I don’t know about that…. My nightmares are pretty dark.”

“All the better,” she says. “They’re what will help you survive.”

“Not if you’ve got a one-way ticket into _Hellraiser_ territory,” he mumbles. 

Her brow crinkles, a vertical crease puckering above her nose. “What—”

“Nothing,” he cuts her off. “Never mind.”

“Come with me. I can help,” she whispers, taking his face between her palms. “Let me,” a gentle brush of her lips against the underside of his jaw. “If only for tonight. You deserve one good night’s sleep.”

* * *

Dean somehow finds himself in her room; a tiny single in a generic chain hotel of the sort he and Sam would never dare check into — the sort that’d track credit cards and where their scams would never pass muster.

The sheets are folded back, crisp and white and smelling of detergent. He doesn’t need much encouragement to strip to t-shirt and boxers and slide between the covers. Instead of slotting up beside him like he’d expected her to, Mara sits at the head of the bed, props the pillow against her crisscrossed shins and invites his head to lie there. He can’t remember the last time he’d laid his head on the folded legs of a girl — _maybe high school?_ It feels like something he’d have done back in high school, innocent and careless — but he has to admit to himself that it feels nice, especially when she settles her hands against his temples, and begins rubbing them. There’s a soothing slickness between their flesh that smells of lavender and Dean relaxes despite himself. The Hellhounds are finally quiet, granting him reprieve. _For the moment, at least_, he thinks. He closes his eyes and tumbles into sleep.

* * *

Mara keeps rubbing Dean’s temples, working in the essential oil. She can sense the moment when he slips into sleep. Bending over him, she brings her lips to the center of his forehead, her hair falling on either side of his face like a curtain. It’s platinum already. 

_There’s a kid, with shaggy dark hair and hazel eyes, tall and half-finished and gangly. His face is twisted in rage._

She kisses Dean’s forehead, down to his nose, and then settles her mouth against his. She inhales the tiniest bit, nudging the dream.

_”Fuck you!” The door slams in dream-Dean’s face, shuts him out. Loud voices become louder — one older-sounding, the other young. Both of them yelling. Both of them furious. Neither of them backing down nor giving quarter. An argument. They always argue. They always fucking argue and they never fucking _shut up_, dream-Dean thinks as he slips his Walkman headphones over his ears, cranks up Metallica to ear-bleeding decibels. He can _still_ hear them—_

The anguish of this dream — _memory_ — is deep and would’ve seemed unfathomable to most, but humans always underestimate themselves. She knows all too well how much a person can withstand. _Homo sapiens_ wouldn’t have survived as a species if they couldn’t cope. 

_“You go out that door, don’t you ever come back!”_

_“Fuck you! Fuck. You. What makes you think I’d ever want to come back? I never want to fucking see you again!”_

She slides into the dream — to submerge into it, to relish it, not manipulate it. Not this time. Manipulation is to wring out every last bit after the nightmare has played out in full and spent its emotion. Dean, though— Dean is one of those rarest of people, able to fake functionality, to charm anyone who crosses his path, yet never able to really bury or process his memories, carrying the rawness of them just beneath his skin and revisiting them in dreams, reliving the pain anew, as though there’d been no healing passage of time.

Back in the corporeal world, she kisses him tenderly on the lips, checks the ends of her hair—they are the golden color of honey. The dream spools and skips and she slips into the nightmare.

_Dean is behind the wheel of a sleek, black car, hunched up in a leather jacket several sizes too large. The window is open and rain is pouring in. The shaggy-haired beanpole kid is standing outside at the side of the road…._

_“Shut up and get in the car, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is tired, flat and resigned._

_“It’s _Sam_.” The kid’s voice is still angry, but there’s a waver there. He swipes at his wet face with the cuff of his jacket._

_“Get in the fucking car already; you can’t swim to California and you don’t want to be all snotty for the hot chicks when you get there. Besides, the leather’s getting wet.” Dean’s voice is sharp, his body tense. “Get in,” he says again, softer this time. A plea._

She drinks in Dean’s desolation, can feel herself take up space, become solid. She’s more alive than she’s been in years. Dean is a treasure. One that she must care for and mine carefully. She can’t afford to use him up all at once. He’s a gourmet feast, meant to be taken in courses and savored, not gorged upon.

_Rain pours down, making the pavement slick. Dean holds out a bus ticket to Sam, staring straight out of the streaming windshield. There’s a moment when the ticket hovers between them and there’s desperate hope in Dean’s reflection in the glass — he’s praying Sam won’t take it — but then Sam does. Wordlessly, he takes the slip of paper, opens the door, steps out into the wet, and slams the door behind him. Dean’s heart shatters._

She forces herself to break the connection. Dean’s face is twisted, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. She kisses them away and his face smooths out.

“Rest well,” she tells him, easing her legs out from beneath him and crossing the room to the bathroom, tucking her mousy brown hair behind her ear. She must resist the temptation. 

Thirteen days, he’d said.

In thirteen days, there won’t be anything left of Dean.

* * *

“You look like shit,” Sam says when Dean staggers out of the bathroom — he’s pale and haggard, swaying on his feet.

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean cuts him off without heat and stumbles to his bed, still fully-clothed. He’s asleep by the time he’s horizontal.

Sam blows out a frustrated breath. He knows Dean had been out all night, had slipped into their room — marked by the _do not disturb_ placard Sam had hung on the handle— during the early hours of the morning. Dean still smells like a distillery, and Sam can’t blame him. He pulls the crusty coverlet from under his brother, unties and eases the Timberlands off Dean’s feet, and throws the rough aqua-blue velour blanket over Dean’s prone form. He sees Dean’s right hand slip under the pillow, the flex of his forearm as his hand curls around the knife he keeps there. 

Sam frowns at Dean shifting restlessly in his sleep. There’s something not quite right about his brother’s quality of sleep. Dean’s a light sleeper — always has been — restless and never sinking deep enough, always staying hypervigilant and on guard. But this — falling asleep so instantaneously, his face furrowing up with pain — isn’t typical. Then again, neither is going to Hell in two weeks. Sam picks up the ice bucket. He might as well go get takeout and the treat of a real Coke, not a ripoff brand, for when Dean wakes, grumpy and hungover, ready to head west or south in pursuit of his next distraction.

* * *

Dean sleeps all day and into the late evening, when he wakes enough to piss and devour half of the burrito Sam had bought him from the Mexican stand several blocks away. His eyes are heavy and his movements are sluggish. Exhaustion slams into him so hard that he immediately goes back to bed when he’s finished eating. He finally pulls off his jeans and flannel shirt before crawling beneath the covers, dragging them up over his head, snarling out a “fuck off” when Sam opens his mouth to speak.

He’s asleep again within moments.

* * *

_There is fire. Hot orange-red-yellow flames that scorch his face and hands, making his skin feel tight like sunburn. The air is hot and thick and hard to breathe. Mommy is nowhere to be seen. He wants Mommy._

_“Take your brother outside as fast as you can!” Daddy is angry as he shoves Sammy at him. “Don’t look back! Now go!”_

_He can barely walk, afraid to drop his brother — he’s not allowed to carry Sammy down the stairs— Sammy’s almost too big— and then they’re in the yard and he’s staring up at the windows —_

_The windows explode._

_He’s got Sammy in his arms and Sammy is screaming. Dean’s not crying. He’s not sure what he’s looking at. The house is on fire. There are firefighters. Sammy’s screaming and screaming and screaming and there’s only Daddy. Mommy never comes._

* * *

Sam bites at his thumbnail, watching his brother. _Maybe it’s some kind of bug_, he tries telling himself, but he doesn’t believe it. This smacks of a case. The burrito he’d eaten earlier turns sour in his stomach. Almost simultaneously, the curtain framing the window that faces the parking lot stirs, sways, as though an unseen hand had pushed it aside. Sam watches as a mist, thin and insubstantial, curls into the room, sliding across the kitchenette table pushed up under the window, knocking off tiny plastic containers of salsa and guacamole and sour cream and the empty Styrofoam boxes. It slides along the thick carpet, over the bedframe, and settles on Dean.

Dean stiffens, goes rigid. His eyes, still half-lidded, flicker side-to-side, and a low gurgle strangles in his throat.

The vapor turns solid, taking the form of a slim, waifish female. Her hair is white-blonde and her skin is pale. She suckles at Dean’s lower lip. Sam watches in horror as the woman becomes more solid, less gray, soaking up color from the room. She is wearing a mismatch of clothing; a pair of those Ugg boots that Jess once coveted but never got around to buying, a summer dress, and a heavy canvas army jacket that is several sizes too large. He catches a glimpse of a silver chain dangling from her wrist, but can’t make out the bent charm. 

Dean is still making that awful sound from beneath her and he hasn’t moved. 

“Hey!” Sam calls out.

The woman pulls her face from Dean’s and he makes a breathless croak that sounds like _Mara_ but could just as easily be _Momma_. Dean gasps as the connection is broken, limbs heaving in a way that reminds Sam of his brother choking on that respirator back in the hospital, almost two years ago. 

“Wait. Your. Turn,” she snarls. She’s flushed and pink from exertion and the roots of her hair have deepened to dirty-blond, fading into white ends. Then she’s off Dean, on the table, and out the window in a blur of light, color, and vapor.

Sam turns to Dean. “What the fuck was _that_?”

Dean’s sitting up and is panting too hard to answer.

* * *

Mara paces in her room, tearing off her clothes. She’s sweating, shaking, and clawing at her arms like a heroin addict in withdrawal — heaven knows she’s consumed enough of them to know what they feel like. Her skin _itches_, and it _hurts_. 

Dean was supposed to have been _alone_! There had been the brother in both nightmares, but they had clearly been years ago. How could the brother still be here? The first dream had the feel of finality. It’d reeked of ending and death. And Dean’s behavior last night…. People only reached that level of terror when they had no one left, had no one with whom to share their burden. Those with attachments and social support could, as a general rule, process dying and fear better. There’s a reason she deliberately seeks out loners. Not only did there tend to be no one looking for them, but also, as a result of their isolation, their emotions were amplified. Dean had all the hallmarks of being a loner, of having no one left in his corner, of being alone and at the end of his rope….

_Fuck_.

And now, because of the brother, her cover is blown. She’d been stupid. Sloppy. She can’t afford to make mistakes like this. 

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

But Dean had tasted so _delicious_. Even now, despite the aborted dream, she can still taste the residue of his fear, can feel how strong it’s making her. She _needs_ him. 

The brother, though…. The brother had been afraid, too. Not quite as powerful as Dean, but close. It’d been different — tangier, sharper, more feral — but full of possibility nevertheless. It makes heat pool within her.

_Maybe…._

An idea begins to form. Perhaps she could take them both. It’d satiate her need for a long, long time. And both of them have trauma and terror in spades. They _reeked_ of it.

She smiles to herself.

Two for the price of one.

* * *

_Mara. Her name is Mara_. Dean’s voice echoes in Sam’s mind. _I met her at the bar_. 

Of course he did.

Dean had gotten up after the figure left, muttered what few details he knew or remembered while he pissed, drank some of the Coke, and tumbled back into his bed, claiming exhaustion.

Sam looks over at Dean — his brother is asleep again, this time fitfully; his face creased with lines of worry that deepen in response to his dreams. He doesn’t wake, not even when Sam experimentally slams a drawer. 

Sam frowns. This is a _case_. Granted, it’s not what he’d hoped to find, but it’s a case nonetheless. All Dean has done for the past forty-eight hours is sleep, with the exception of rising to piss and maybe eat. That girl — whoever or whatever she was — had done _something_ to him.

_Her name is Mara_, the words repeat. There’s something familiar about the word. Had he heard it before? Read it? He glances over at Dean, who mutters something unintelligible in his sleep, and goes to his duffel, where he unearths their father’s journal. 

He flips open the book, scanning pages, and then he sees it — the familiar _NIGHTMARES_ scrawled along the top, taking up the width of the page, with the _MARE_ portion of the word boxed off, underlined with several hard strokes. This time, he notices a word penciled in his father’s rushed chicken-scratch at the bottom of the page, below the freaky drawing: _silver_.

“Fuck,” he breathes. He scrawls out a quick note to Dean on the motel notepad in the off-chance his brother wakes alone — _Library – be back soon_ — and rushes out the door.

* * *

She’s more cautious when she enters the room this time, taking the time to check first — but this time Dean’s alone. His brother isn’t in the room, lying in wait or lurking out of sight — the sleek black car she’d noticed last time, the one from Dean’s dream, is gone from the parking lot. This time, she shouldn’t be disturbed. Or at the very least, she should have some warning.

Already, Dean’s mind is beginning to respond to the smell of the lavender oil she’d rubbed into her hands before coming here, the thick dreamless blackness of exhaustion starting to twist. “It’s important to remember your nightmares,” she whispers. Men. So easy to condition. To manipulate. “You’re going to need them.” 

A nightmare swirls into life. For once, it doesn’t involve the brother.

_Dean stands on a wooden stage in a large white tent of the sort used for religious revival meetings. He’s dressed in jeans and a slightly too-large, soft-looking zip-front hoodie. He’s small-looking, younger than his current age, his hair limp and mussed as though he hadn’t taken the time to style it. He doesn’t look well. His hand goes to his chest, rubs it absently. The rows and rows and rows of folding chairs before him are empty. There’s the sound of cloth against cloth and slowly a line of figures walk single-file toward him. They’re all kinds of people — men, women, black, white, Hispanic, children, teenagers. And all of them dressed in everything from hospital gowns to their best clothes to tattered jeans and t-shirts…._

_“Why you? Why not me?” they chant softly. “Why you? Why not me?” Their steps are slow and measured, their footfalls against the dry dirt underscoring their low intonation. “Why you? Why not me?” The words run together as they climb up the steps to the stage and draw close. “Why you? Why not me?” they say as one, gathering into a tight circle around him, a couple of rows deep, pressing in closer, like a noose tightening, and fall silent. The quiet is a ringing deafness, and it almost sounds like the tinnitus that was the hallmark of that Reaper that time…. She can taste the memory as it flits through him, and then she knows as soon as he recognizes who these people are — they’re the ghosts of Sue-Ann Le Grange’s victims._

_Their numbers swell, filling the stage and spilling off into the shadows and filling the seats. It’s standing room only — all the ones he couldn’t save._

_A sharp pain catches Dean in the chest, making him gasp and clutch at his breast. The last time he’d felt pain like this, he was…._

_One of them breaks ranks and steps into the circle until he’s toe-to-toe with Dean. A rubber cap is stretched tight over his scalp and he’s only wearing a Speedo. Water drips down his face and torso and he smells of chlorine. A gaping black hole starts at his left breast and spreads. “My heart should still be beating!” he screams, jabbing a finger at the darkness in the middle of his chest and spraying spittle on Dean’s face._

_“It wasn’t me!” Dean shouts back, his heart pounding loudly, echoing in the tent for all to hear. It skips a beat or two, making him wince, before evening out again. “I didn’t have anything to do with it! I didn’t fucking ask for this!”_

_“You should be dead instead of me!”_

_“I _know_!” Dean screams. “I fucking know that! I fucking know better than anyone else that what’s dead should stay dead!”_

_“Then why didn’t you let things be?” The voice is female and familiar, but before he can place it, the beating amplifies and grows erratic. He gasps and drops to his knees, gasping for air, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on land; as though there isn’t enough oxygen in the air, hands pressing against his chest._

_“Dean,” the voice comes back, this time accompanied by a hand settling on his back. His heart slows and he can breathe again. The hand withdraws. He looks up, doesn’t rise to his feet._

_He’s staring at a living corpse, frail emaciated body draped in a far-too-large hospital gown._

_It’s Layla. He suddenly knows it’s Layla, even though she’s a skeleton in skin, gray and sick and the way she must have looked at the end — and there _had_ to have been an end because there’d been nothing to save her. Not once he and Sam shattered that altar and sprung the reaper. She’d said as much the last time he saw her. She’s looking at him — sad and kind and condemning— mostly condemning._

_He opens his mouth—_

“You!” 

She’s suddenly jerked from her feast — the shout was enough to startle her from the manipulation but not so much so that she lets Dean’s mind slip completely free from her grasp. As it is, she merely allows the nightmare to fade. She can spark another one when this distraction is dealt with if necessary, but knowing Dean, she probably won’t have to. He’s more than capable of spinning one to rival her finest creations on his own.

The brother — _Sam_, she remembers from Dean’s dreams, _the one who left, the baby_ — bursts into the room, startling her where she’s crouched over Dean’s body. Despite his size, he’s clearly younger than her victim. She sniffs, can smell the stink of fear on him. He’s _afraid_ — not for himself but for her victim, his brother. _Excellent_.

“You’re a Mare,” he says, several printouts falling from his hand to the floor. She catches a glimpse of an article with _NIGHTMARE_ as a header.

“Congratulations,” she says archly, “you’re literate.”

“Get away from my brother!”

“He’s mine. He gave himself to me.” A pause. “And I thought I told you to wait your turn. Your own nightmares will begin soon enough.” She turns back to Dean, strokes his cheek as she pitches her voice low and soothing. “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.” 

Dean’s face crumples with unease. 

She bends, not breaking her gaze from the brother’s paralyzed, horrified stare, creamy-brown hair spilling over her shoulder like melted milk chocolate as she fits her mouth over Dean’s, and suckles.

* * *

Dean drifts, Mara’s weight warm and heavy on him. He feels her kiss his mouth, her fingers caressing his jaw. _Let me take care of you_, he hears her whisper. _It’s important to remember your nightmares. You’re going to need them_. It’s a soothing refrain at this point, something he can latch onto as he slips into sleep like the security blanket he must’ve once had, the one that probably went up in flames along with his mom. His dreams twist from fields and Wendigos to a cabin in the woods. 

_Outside, Hellhounds yap and yelp._

_His father is there, larger than life, taking up far more space than necessary. He starts talking, his voice underscored by the howling: _Mad? I’m proud of you. You know, Sam and I, we can get pretty obsessed…. 

_The words make Dean’s flesh crawl. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. His father circles closer to him. His eyes flicker a sickly yellow and something tears into him, turns him inside out. Dean screams the way he hadn’t that night._

_The demon is still talking in Dad’s voice, the words sliding in between his ribs deeper than whatever had cut his flesh: _If you can’t save him, you’re going to have to kill him — it’s the only way you’ll be able to protect Sam. You watch out for this family — you always have and you’ll do what needs to be done, in the end; you’ll have to. It’s not over yet; it’s only just beginning….

_Blood pours down his chest, making his black t-shirt glisten, soaks into his denim button-down. He’s terrified. His body is racked with pain. He wants to run, scream, _something_, but he’s pinned to the wall like a butterfly behind glass and all he can do is gasp sobbing breaths._

_Water splashes over them, as cold and wet and ineffective as the holy water Sam threw on Dad earlier and there’s the heady stench of a sage smudge-stick._

_“What the hell,” Dad mutters — and then the Yellow-Eyed Demon is leaning in close. There’s the smell of lavender and suddenly he knows that it’s Mara, knows that she’s been twisting up the memory somehow. And the terror snaps. Dean hasn’t been afraid of monsters since he was old enough to aim a gun at one. He grins, showing his teeth._

_“This ain’t my first rodeo, sister.”_

* * *

She didn’t expect this, never dreamed she’d encounter a Hunter, much less two of them working in tandem.

It hadn’t occurred to her that someone would recognize her and fight back, despite the snares of the dreams. Dean’s still stumbling through his nightmare, lost in the night when his father became the thing he both hunted and feared — and stared at him with amber-yellow eyes that glowed from familiar sockets. He should be helpless. He should be fucking _fetal_.

_“No, I _won’t_!” dream-Dean shouts and shoves at her— at his demonically possessed father— at the figure he’s facing. The coppery stench of his blood is almost as thick as the stink of his fear. “I won’t kill Sam, but I _will_ kill you!” _

Water splashes onto them and the smell of pot — or a sage smudge-stick — permeates the dream-cabin. She reflexively jerks. No one knows or manipulates the boundaries of _real_ and _dream_ better than she does, and that was most definitely _real_.

_A quivering smirk that doesn’t reach dream-Dean’s eyes plays at lips slick with blood and tears. “This isn’t real.” He spits a clotty globule into her face._

She has to keep the dream going. She shakes off whatever is happening outside. She can’t lose Dean, not when he’s feeding her so well, but if his brother is trying to wake him up—

_She reaches up, wipes the blood from her cheek. “Only humans say dreams aren’t real.” She cradles dream-Dean’s cheek, reaching deep into his mind and _digs_. She smiles as she drags up another soaking-wet black night, an African-American man with a knife, Sam staggering in the mud like a marionette with its strings cut…._ Dean is instantly hamstrung, his fight buried under enough terror to feed a hundred of her kind.

_Now_ for the brother.

He’s still standing there, a stump of smoking smudge-stick in one hand, a silver flask in the other, waiting to see if the water had some effect. It must have been infused with some kind of blessing or spell, but such things have no effect on her kind. 

_Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids._ That was from the girl in Erie. Her father had said that to her the one and only time she dared to fight back. She’d never tried again. The punishment hadn’t been worth it.

She shoves him — Sam — blindly with one hand as he rushes at her. He goes flying into the paneling, head cracking against the wall, and drops into a crumpled heap on the floor. 

She turns back, inhales harder, and Dean chokes. He’s paling, turning gray and she’s so close. _A little more and you’ll be mine_, she thinks. She closes her hand around the small brass charm — it looks like a face of some kind — dangling against his sweat-damp shirt, twisting the leather cord in her fingers, ready to snatch it from his body at the moment of death, to flee before Sam comes to. Shame she couldn’t milk him longer. She breathes in, and Dean gurgles, his body stiff and unresponsive. 

She senses movement, sees the glimmer of light off metal.

* * *

Sam peels himself off the floor, his head and shoulder throbbing. He presses one hand against the wall and stays there, riding out the buzzing in his ears. The Mare had thrown him hard — she’s much stronger than he’d ever expected her to be. Especially considering she’d done it one-handedly while still straddling Dean, her other hand on Dean’s chest, fisting in Dean’s soft t-shirt, her face inches from his, her long, smooth, nearly-black hair pooling around their heads. 

She arches her back with the force of her inhale.

Dean’s gagging. His breath rattling in his throat, the flesh around his lips turning blue. His body is locked and still on the bed. The Mare visibly strains to inhale, to suck Dean’s life from his mouth. 

From the looks of it, Dean’s putting up a hell of a fight from the way his paralyzed body tenses and cords, limbs going rigid, eyes furiously flickering back-and-forth under closed lids. But it’s clear that his brother isn’t going to hold out much longer. 

Sam scrambles, sticks his hand into one of the duffels and comes up with a knife. _Silver. Perfect_.

Dean’s body is slack, his skin gray and lathered with sweat.

The Mare is completely focused on Dean, bringing her mouth closer to his.

Sam charges.

The knife plunges deep into the Mare’s back, above the kidney. 

She howls, releasing Dean, twisting around to scrabble at Sam. She gets purchase, closes her fingers around Sam’s neck. She’s starting to squeeze, thumbs pressing up into his trachea, when Sam finds the knife, pulls it out and thrusts it back into her, twisting it. She screams, lets go of Sam, and falls from the bed.

She’s colorless mist and vapor before she hits the ground. 

Panting, Sam turns to his brother still on the bed. Dean is curled on his side; coughing up a lung, color returning to his face, and relief floods Sam. Dean is _alive_. He meets Dean’s eyes, rubbing at his throat. “You okay?”

* * *

“So, how did you figure it out?” Dean looks out into the middle distance, half sitting on the hood of the Impala. There’s nothing to see except the road and the church. He still looks exhausted; he’s pale, drawn, and the flesh under his eyes is puffy and bruised-looking.

“You mean, how did I know it was her?” Sam rasps hoarsely. It still hurts to talk. He turns down the corners of his mouth thoughtfully. “It was easy once I figured out the etymology — mere, mare, nightmare… they all have the same root.” A pause. “Not to mention, she wasn’t exactly making a secret of it. She was on top of you sucking your breath from your lungs.” He hesitates. “Dad was onto something with the Mare lore — I wouldn’t have figured it out half as quickly without the journal.” A beat. “Did you know the word nightmare has roots in the Old English word _mære_, which is the word for incubus—”

“You’re a fucking geek.” Dean stands, straightens. “_Etymology_? Really?” He still doesn’t meet Sam’s gaze.

“Saved your ass, though.” Sam clamps his lips tightly shut. He waits for Dean’s quip.

Instead, Dean opens the driver’s side door. “Get in. It’s thirteen hours to Sioux Falls and daylight’s wasting.” He meets Sam’s eyes over the roof of the car; there’s a raw, terrified, desperation in his brother’s eyes: _I’m counting on you to figure this one out._

Sam swallows, clenches his jaw, and nods. “Let’s go.” He opens the passenger door. _I’ve got your back. I’m going to save you._

They both slide into the car, simultaneously shutting the doors, and the engine roars to life.

“Yeah.” _I know. You always do._

**Author's Note:**

> **Author Note, Part II:** My prompts were as follows:
> 
>   1. There are worse things here than ghosts. <https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kalliel/5853280/207374/207374_900.jpg>
>   2. and <https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kalliel/5853280/207683/207683_900.jpg>
>   3. “They're coordinates again, aren't they.” <https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kalliel/5853280/207135/207135_900.jpg>
>   4. Everywhere, signs of the divine grotesque keep popping up. They'll never make it to the Grand Canyon at this rate. <https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kalliel/5853280/206827/206827_900.jpg>
>   5. It's important to remember your nightmares. You're going to need them. <https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kalliel/5853280/145845/145845_original.png>
>   6. Gimme something inspired by the artistic aesthetic of the summergen banner! <https://i.imgur.com/CANamIH.jpg>
> 
> \-----
> 
> Comments stress me out, but I adore kudos!


End file.
